Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case
Page 13
According to Fruge’s deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, it was in the ambulance that Rose began to relate her fascinating and astonishing tale. Calmed by the sedative and, according to Fruge, quite lucid in demeanor, she began to respond to some routine questions with some unusual answers. She told Fruge about the trip from Florida to Dallas to deliver the package of heroin. But she also said something almost omniscient: That the two Cubans had talked about killing Kennedy in Dallas.5 Fruge did not take this very seriously. He considered it to be, at least partly, the ravings of a junkie. Once delivered to Jackson, Fruge left. He then told a cohort on the force, Don White, about what Rose had told him.6 Fruge may not have taken her seriously at the time, but according to a doctor interviewed by the House Select Committee, Rose predicted the assassination before it occurred on November 22.7 A nurse by the name of Charlie Wilbans also talked to Cheramie.8 A couple of days later, the same doctor to whom she told her miraculous prognostication talked to her again. She told him a remarkable detail: she had worked for Jack Ruby. The fact that she predicted the assassination in advance spread through the hospital. Dr. Wayne Owen, who had been interning from LSU at the time, later told the Madison Capital Times that he and other interns were told of the plot in advance of the assassination.9 Owen told the same newspaper that Cheramie had also revealed the name of one Jack Rubinstein in advance. Owen did not understand the significance of this until he learned that Rubinstein was Jack Ruby’s real name. When Owen learned that Ruby was Rubinstein, he grew quite concerned: “We were all assured that something would be done about it by the FBI or someone. Yet we never heard anything.”
Once Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Fruge reversed himself on Cheramie. He called the hospital in Jackson “and told them by no way in the world to turn her loose until I could get my hands on her.”10 So, on November 25, Fruge interviewed Cheramie again. He found out her Florida journey with the two men had originated in Miami. Also, that the men seemed to be a part of the conspiracy rather than just cognizant of it. Cheramie’s child was being held as ransom so that she would play her part in the drug deal. After the heroin transaction, she was to proceed to the Rice Hotel in Houston under an assumed name. Houston is in close proximity to Galveston, the town from which the drugs were coming in. From there, they were to escape to Mexico. Fruge had the heroin aspect of Cheramie’s story investigated. Every part of it checked out from the correct ship name coming into Galveston to the reservations under a false name at the Rice Hotel.11
On November 26, Fruge flew Cheramie from Louisiana to Houston. In the back seat of the small Sesna 180, a newspaper was lying between them. One of the headlines read that the investigators had found no connections between Ruby and Oswald. When Cheramie read this, she started to giggle. She said that Ruby and Oswald did know each other. She understood this from working for Ruby.12 Fruge then had his superior call Will Fritz of the Dallas Police to relay what an important witness Cheramie could be in the Kennedy case. Fruge then told the HSCA what happened next: “Colonel Morgan called Captain Fritz up from Dallas and told him what we had, the information that we had …. And there was a little conversation …. He turned around and told us they don’t want her. They’re not interested.”13 Fruge then asked Cheramie if she wished to tell her tale to the FBI. She declined. She did not wish to involve herself further. With this, the Cheramie investigation was now halted. Rose was released, and Fruge went back to Louisiana. Her potentially explosive story was now put out to pasture.
The story could possibly have been even more explosive than Fruge thought. For on November 28, 1963, a Margaret Kay Kauffmann of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, told the FBI that her mother had recovered a piece of paper in the leaves beneath her porch. It was a trailer advertisement. In handwriting scrawled across the top left was the name of a club called the Silver Slipper or Silver Bell. In the top middle of the page was the name Lee Oswald. On the top right was the name Rubinstein. In the middle was the name Jack Ruby and at the bottom was the name Dallas, Texas. A Cuban doctor named Julio Fernandez often burned trash in their backyard, under her balcony. The paper with the names on it was found about 20 feet from his last burn. Fernandez’s brother had been the captain of police under Fulgencio Batista.14
Martin Pushes Banister over the Edge
Guy Banister told Guy Johnson about a week before the assassination, “If I’m dead in a week, no matter what the circumstances look like, it won’t be from natural causes.”15 As we have seen, Johnson was the reserve Office of Naval Intelligence officer who had aided the arrival of Sergio Arcacha Smith from Cuba into New Orleans. On November 22, in the company of Joe New-brough, Banister had stopped at a print shop where he learned about the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas. He said, “Now all we have to do is kill Earl Warren and the country will clear up.”16 Once cozily ensconced and drinking at the Katzenjammer Bar, he then said, “I wonder why Bobby wasn’t included.”17
Banister was joined at the Katzenjammer by his associate Jack Martin. Martin was one of the so-called investigators who did detective work for Banister’s office whenever an assignment would come in. Later on, back at the office, a quarrel developed between the two men. According to Banister’s secretary Delphine Roberts, Martin was standing in the office in proximity to where the files were kept. Banister then accused Martin of absconding with several files and hiding them in his coat. Martin said something he should not have: “What are you going to do, kill me like you all did Kennedy?” Banister then started to pistol whip Martin’s face with a .357 Magnum revolver. Martin felt that Banister would have killed him if not for the intervention of Roberts, who pleaded with him not to shoot him.18 Banister relented. He shoved some money in Martin’s pocket and told him to go to a doctor or hospital. As Martin walked out, he stopped back at the bar he and Banister had been drinking at. He remarked to the bartender, “The dirty Nazi bastards did it to him in Texas and to me here!”19 Martin was treated for his injuries at Charity Hospital.20 Martin also called the police about the assault. But in addition, he called Presley Trosclair Jr., a police intelligence officer, to report the incident. According to Bob Buras, a former New Orleans police officer and HSCA investigator, no ordinary person could get through to Trosclair about such an incident. The report was written by Francis Martello, another interesting fact. For, as we will see, it was Martello who interviewed Oswald after he was arrested in a curious street disturbance in August of that year.21
Local FBI agent Regis Kennedy, along with his partner on the Cuban exile beat Warren DeBrueys, knew much about New Orleans, Guy Banister, and Lee Oswald. Garrison investigator Andrew Sciambra learned that Kennedy thought Banister was the key to everything that happened in New Orleans and further, that he was in on everything from the beginning to the very end. Kennedy also believed that Martin did actually steal some of Banister’s CIA files and that is what caused the assault.22 Confirming part of this was Mary Brengel, a part-time secretary in Banister’s office. She said that when the news came on the radio that Kennedy had been shot, Delphine Roberts was elated. For the HSCA, Brengel said that she came to believe that both Banister and Roberts had some prior knowledge of the assassination.23
But, interestingly enough, Martin now began to talk to and send letters out to law enforcement officials about David Ferrie, not Banister. (This is probably because he feared being assaulted again.) On the twenty-third, he told the New Orleans police that Ferrie owned a rifle similar to the one used in the assassination; that Ferrie and Oswald were in the same Civil Air Patrol unit; at the time of the assassination, Ferrie was headed for Texas; and that Ferrie had Oswald’s library card on him the day Kennedy was killed.24 In a November 25 letter to the FBI, Martin said much of the same about Ferrie, except that he added a couple of interesting points. First, Ferrie was getting mail from Cuban people Oswald was connected with, and second, Ferrie was dumped by Cubans because of his pro-Castro activity.25 Since there is no record of Ferrie doing anything pro-Castro, coul
d Martin have been talking about Ferrie’s knowledge of and/or participation in Oswald’s pro-Castro activities that summer? On the twenty-fourth, Martin got in contact with Herman Kohlman of the DA’s office in New Orleans.
Although the New Orleans police did not think there was anything interesting about Ferrie, they were almost certainly either wrong or being deliberately blind. For in the wake of the assassination, Ferrie was doing something that was more than faintly suspicious. In fact it could be noted that, as prosecutors like Vincent Bugliosi like to say, Ferrie was showing “consciousness of guilt.” For it appears he was trying to confiscate evidence that he was ever associated with Oswald. Within the space of five days, he did this at least three times. Oswald’s former landlady in New Orleans told several sources, including the HSCA, that Ferrie was at her door in search of his library card. He thought he may have loaned it to Oswald and wanted to retrieve it from his room. Even though Oswald had left New Orleans two months previous, Ferrie was looking for it now. But, as William Davy has noted, what is so startling about this testimony is that Ferrie was at her door on the day of the assassination, before he left for Texas.26 After Ferrie returned from that state, he was at it again. He went to see a neighbor of Oswald, a couple named Eames. Ferrie had heard that her husband saw Oswald at the library. He wanted to know if Mr. Eames ascertained whose card Oswald used there.27 Then again, on November 27, Ferrie was on the phone calling the home of a past member of his Civil Air Patrol unit. Roy McCoy was not there at the time, so his wife answered the phone. She said Ferrie asked about any pictures McCoy had at his house that depicted his past membership in Ferrie’s CAP unit. Ferrie said the meetings he helmed were held at the New Orleans Airport. Ferrie also asked her if the name “Oswald” was familiar to her. McCoy called the FBI about this incident. He told them that he thought that “Ferrie was seeking information about Oswald and photographs of Oswald to show that he was not acquainted with Oswald,”28 which is an appropriate description of what Ferrie was up to in the days after the assassination. The obvious question that no one ever got to ask David Ferrie about this was: Why?
Ferrie’s Old Friend Lee Oswald
David William Ferrie was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1918. He was educated in Catholic schools like St. Patrick’s Elementary and St. Ignatius High School, from which he graduated in 1935.29 His father, James H. Ferrie, was a captain in the Cleveland Police Department and later became a lawyer. After graduating, Ferrie then went to John Carroll University, another Catholic institution. Ferrie got good grades there, but he decided to leave after his junior year to become a priest. Therefore in 1938 he entered St. Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland. He studied there for three years. But the year before he was to graduate, he had a nervous breakdown. After he recovered, he tried to return, but St. Mary’s did not want him back. He reportedly had, a problem with authority.
Ferrie now shifted his goal to becoming a teacher. He enrolled at Baldwin-Wallace College in nearby Berea, Ohio. In 1940–41 he did his student teaching at Rocky River High School located in a suburb of Cleveland. A department chair, interviewed years later about Ferrie, said he was a poor teacher. She also criticized his character as being “tricky, a bluffer, shrewd, and probably a liar.” She also added that he seemed to have “a particular interest in the younger students, more than a teacher should have.”
At the conclusion of his student teaching, Ferrie seemed to understand it was not for him. So he tried again to become a priest. In August of 1941, he enrolled at St. Charles Seminary in Carthagena, Ohio. While there, his father bought him a plane, and David learned to fly. But in 1944, on the eve of his graduation, the seminary refused to allow him to continue his studies. After spending six years trying to become a priest, Ferrie had now failed not once, but twice. This was obviously a terrible blow to him.
There was an unsigned memo at St. Charles which explained why this had occurred. The anonymous author noted that although David had started out there well, he later began to have social problems. After gaining a position of leadership, he began to exhibit instability of character. This manifested itself in growing conflict and jealousy, back-stabbing, self-pity, exaggeration, manipulation, threats, and contempt of authority. There was no one grand event, but rather an accumulation of infractions that led the elders at the seminar to believe Ferrie would not fit in as a leader of a religious community. The final and most debilitating point against him was this: “When corrected, his attitude seemed to be that the rule should be changed rather than he should be forced to observe it.” So on November 27, 1944, he was dismissed.
David now began to see a psychiatrist. And it resulted in a period of relative stability for him. He resided at home while teaching English and aeronautics at Benedictine High School, a Catholic boy’s school in Cleveland. It was here that Ferrie also began his long relationship with the Civil Air Patrol. And around this time, Ferrie began to be seriously interested in the Cold War and fighting communists. He tried to secure an Air Force commission by writing President Truman’s Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson. In the letter, Ferrie accented both his flying and instructional skills with young pilots: “and by God, they will get into action and kill those Russians—they should have been wiped out years ago. When am I going to get the commission, when the Russians are bombing Cleveland?”30 When the commission was not forthcoming, Ferrie tried writing the Air Force directly, in similar terms, “There is nothing I would enjoy better than blowing the hell out of every damn Russian Communist, Red, or what have you…. I want to train killers, however bad that sounds. It is what we need.”31 In 1948, a string of serious misconduct episodes in the CAP culminated in him leaving Ohio. In one instance, Ferrie flew a grounded plane after dark and with no lights from Columbus to Cleveland. Upon his landing, he said he was an officer in the Air Force. This almost got him dismissed from the CAP. In 1950 two CAP cadets reported that Ferrie, as their instructor, had them visit a bordello in a nearby town. Facing dismissal, Ferrie negotiated a transfer to Louisiana. When the Louisiana branch asked for his Ohio file, the Cleveland office found it missing, but could not prove it had been stolen.
So in 1951, David Ferrie arrived in his new home of New Orleans. He moved into the storied French Quarter and was soon living on Bourbon Street. Ferrie had some productive years there in the fifties. He landed a good job with Eastern Air lines, learned to fly large passenger jets, and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain. With much downtime, Ferrie began to study things of interest to him like biochemistry, psychology, and hypnotism. He continued his involvement with the CAP and rose to the rank of captain. It was here that Ferrie met the young Lee Oswald.
In 1955, a classmate of both Oswald and his friend Ed Voebel interested the two adolescents into joining the local CAP.32 Oswald was fifteen at the time; Ferrie was more than twice his age. There were two troops in New Orleans: One was at Lakefront Airport (Lakefront Squadron), and one was at Moisant Airport (Eagle Squadron). Oswald began attending meetings at the former location. But later in the summer, he shifted to Eagle Squadron. Eagle appears to have been a renegade CAP unit created by Ferrie after he got in trouble again with the authorities over his dubious activities.33 He encouraged them to drink, took them on unauthorized flights in his Stinson Voyager plane, and taught them “mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”34 He gave his cadets the impression he was studying medicine at Tulane University, which he was not. He also led overnight encampments at Keesler Air Force Base in nearby Biloxi, Mississippi.
But Ferrie also told his cadets that he was going to control their outside activities and their future destinies. Two former cadets said that Ferrie convinced four of them to join the Marines.35 Robert Boylston told the HSCA that Ferrie gave him over a thousand dollars to attend Loyola University in New Orleans and never once asked for it back. Boylston recalled that Ferrie was always talking about secret orders of a military or intelligence nature. In 1958, Ferrie said he had secret knowledge of the Lebanon Crisis, where Eisenhower sent troops to sec
ure the Beirut International Airport when Lebanon was being threatened by Syria and Egypt. In 1960 he said he knew about secret orders about Cuba. When he was wounded in 1960 or ’61, Ferrie said it was on a flight over Cuba. In 1961—after the Bay of Pigs—Ferrie talked a great deal about a “group” who knew what was going on in America and was going to take care of it. Boylston said that when Ferrie’s drill team went to Dallas for a competition, Ferrie gave them a name to call. They did, and the man set up reservations for them at a motel. Ferrie flew back on an Air Force C-47. Ferrie told Boylston that he was never to talk about their training at the lake, even if “it” didn’t go. Boylston did not know what “it” was. And he did not want to know. But he felt that “some of the people around Ferrie, and Ferrie, were not playing when they talked about “taking care of something.”36
In 1993 proven plagiarist Gerald Posner wrote in his discredited book Case Closed that there was no credible evidence that Oswald knew David Ferrie. This is and was ludicrous. It turns out that Ferrie was correct in his fear that there was a photo of himself with Oswald from the CAP. The photo surfaced in 1993 and was shown on the PBS Frontline special about Oswald. Former Moisant CAP member John B. Ciravalo Jr. discovered it.37 But beyond that, there were several witnesses who put the two men together in New Orleans. Posner deliberately avoided mentioning this evidence, because it was easy to find. It was also easy to discover that, in addition to absconding with evidence that demonstrated the relationship, Ferrie was lying about not knowing Oswald. In his FBI interview of November 25, Ferrie named Jerry Paradis as an instructor in the CAP in 1954–55. Ferrie told the Bureau that Paradis could tell them that Oswald and Ferrie were never in the same unit together. Yet when Mike Ewing of the HSCA interviewed Paradis, he told him that he was surprised that the FBI never interviewed him about the matter since, “I sure could have told them when Oswald and Ferrie were in the CAP.” He stated that “I specifically remember Oswald. I can remember him clearly, and Ferrie was heading the unit then. I’m not saying that they may have been there together, I’m saying it is a certainty.” Paradis, who was then a corporate lawyer, said Oswald first attended meetings at Lakefront, but when Ferrie left Lakefront to start up a troop at Moisant, Oswald followed him there.38 This was echoed by CAP member Anthony Atzenhoffer, who was a platoon sergeant and frequently called the roll at meetings. He told Ewing that he was sure Ferrie and Oswald were at Moisant together at the same time. He also recalled Voebel being there with Oswald.39 (To further show the kinds of connections Ferrie had at the time, Atzenhoffer added that Ferrie tried to recruit CAP students for “experiments” at Tulane Medical School.)